


Breathing in Always

by ratherbeblue (orphan_account)



Series: Almost/Always [2]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Eddie Kaspbrak-centric, Everyone Is Alive, Fix-It, Internal Monologue, M/M, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-25
Updated: 2019-10-25
Packaged: 2021-01-02 20:01:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21167072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/ratherbeblue
Summary: Seeing him walk into the restaurant shouldn’t make you feel this way. His blue eyes shouldn’t feel like a gut punch and sweet sigh hitting your ears at the same time.





	Breathing in Always

I.

Seeing him walk into the restaurant shouldn’t make you feel this way. His blue eyes shouldn’t feel like a gut punch and sweet sigh hitting your ears at the same time.

Saying hello to Mike and Bill didn’t, that’s for sure. No, seeing them again was nice enough, honestly a relief only slightly tinged by your constant undercurrent of anxiety.

You didn’t feel like your face was on fire or your stomach was taking a vacation to your knees then, even when you crashed your car and felt the sudden searing burn of the decades old scar on your palm you didn’t feel like this.

This is altogether new and so, so old, so Richie…

And that’s what Richie’s always done to you, made you feel way too much way too fast, burning white hot and cutting a path through you.

You should have taken another pill after you got off the plane.

But it’s too late for that now.

It’s too late and he’s coming towards you.

_ Take a look at these guys. _

It should scare you, how easy it is to fall back into the past. To feel ageless and forever young with them, like you’ll never die. 

If you did though, you think that might be okay. What a way to go, surrounded by friends, surrounded by… love. 

Stan’s wedding ring catches the harsh restaurant lighting and you feel your heart constrict painfully. The metal on your own finger feels white hot and it takes all you have not to rip it off right then and there.

Maybe you’ll talk to him later, you hope you don’t have to.

Ben and Bev are making eyes at each other, have been since they walked in and you’re so glad, for the thousandth time this evening that some things never change.

Maybe some things do last forever.

You want to calm down, to look at Richie the way you used to dream about, soft and warm, but you can’t.

Being in the same room as him is making you crazy. Making every hair stand on end and every nerve light up in a familiar blaze. 

But there’s something different about him. 

He’s just as loud, cracking just as many jokes. But it’s somehow shifted, like you’re viewing him through frosted glass windows and you don’t know how to make it stop.

So instead you cut, words harsh, tone harsher, no backing down, no letting go.

He takes it in stride and Stan rolls his eyes, drinks from his glass, wedding ring glinting again.

II.

It’s later, after the clown, after the cave, after the quarry.

Then you finally get to talk to him. Really talk.

The way you wanted to but didn’t know how, all those years ago, in his car, on your bed, in the hammock, at the bridge.

He talks first.

_ Do you-? _

You want to reply.

_ Yes. _

_ Yes i remember. _

_ Yes i know. _

_ Yes i wish i had stayed. _

_ Yes i love you. _

_ Still. _

_ Always. _

_ Forever. _

But your treacherous tongue doesn’t let you. Instead you pull him down, you push your bare, cleansed, empty, hand into his hair.

(You don’t spare a moment to think about how you had let the metal shackle fall into the green, sun-warmed water after jumping headlong into it.) 

You spend the moment kissing him instead. You try to push everything you haven’t said yet into the kiss, knowing that if you forget something you’ll have time to tell him later.

_ Time. _

He kisses you back, but he’s shaking, trembling, coming undone. Your own cheekbones are hot and wet with his tears and you want to do so many things.

You want to go back and do things right the first time, but more than that you want to make sure you never have that thought in the future about now.

You want to grasp your heart from your chest and hold it out to him, let him yank it away with his greedy hands and stuff his mouth with the dripping aortas, _ tsk _ and use a handkerchief to blot at the blood that’s dripped and gathered around his collar while he smiles, crooked teeth filled with sinewy flesh.

You want to never tell him you thought that because you know he already thinks he’s some sort of monster. But he’s not.

He’s not.

You want to tell him not to cry, not as a demand but as a comfort. A hand outstretched to reach into his soul and stroke the pain away. You’re afraid it will come out wrong, too harsh, too demanding, so you don’t say anything, you just hold him.

You hold him until he stops shaking.

For the most part, at least.

You hold him until your legs are locked from staying so still so long, and your arms are starting to ache against the grip you have around him.

You hold him until he moves away, body uncurling from where it was hooked against yours, and you think once he stands up again he’ll kiss you again, but he doesn’t.

He smiles, a little embarrassed and a lot sad.

You realize, heart heavy and breaking, that he thinks you don’t love him. Not like he loves you. And the thought of that seems insane, your heart screams against the injustice that he could think that at all, ever.

You want to yell at him, ask him what the fuck he thought you meant by playing tonsil hockey with him in a fucking hotel hallway if it wasn’t a proposal to _ something _ , anything, _ everything _.

But this is Richie in front of you. This isn’t some faceless guy in a dark bar, not the tall guy with the nice smile at the out of town conference.

This is Richie and for once in the long time you’ve known and loved him you cannot even imagine yelling at him because right now Richie is over ten years of your life, minus the twenty seven you spent apart without knowing it.

Richie is the six year old finger paint covered bodies and the ten year old kickballs to the face and the thirteen year old screaming and crying into his arms.

He’s the sixteen year old feeling of enough drunken bravery to kiss him and settling for running a hand through his hair while he pukes his guts out and the eighteen year old regret of having to leave.

It’s too terrifying to think about but too familiar and perfect not to try, not to hope.

And so you try again,

**Author's Note:**

> no reading before we post, stream of consciousness only, we die like men


End file.
